Tag Archives: Drawing

Sketching, draw and drawing are the same thing right, are they really, but of course they are, aren’t they?

To draw and sketch, are they the same?

Dictionary examples:

“To draw is to sketch (someone or something) in lines; delineate; depict: to draw a vase with charcoal, to compose or create (a picture) in lines, to mark or lay out; trace: to draw perpendicular lines.

A sketch is a hasty or UN-detailed drawing or painting often made as a preliminary study.”

Many years ago when I was in school, I took an option to do Technical Drawing, I didn’t like it because it was more about mathematics, accuracy and precession with no room for mistakes, I did not consider it to be drawing at all. I believed it was too mechanical, too calculated and I did not realize then, that all drawing is about these same processes of measurement but carried out in different ways, using your eyes rather than a ruler. When doing Technical Drawing, you know how to do it and how it will look, before it has even been done but when you do some sketching, these restraints are not as important, as just getting something down on paper.

To me there is a big difference between them are: drawings are about accuracy and detail, where as sketches are about speed and experimentation, but to clearly define them individually, is difficult because aspects of both spill into each other.

When you draw with accuracy, the information you record becomes visual knowledge, so when you sketch, that same visual knowledge spills over into your practice, which in turn informs you’re sketching.

Sketching is about getting things right and wrong, to test or find new ideas, to drive your ability, where as drawing is about doing this but also it is about getting it right, with all the details in all the right places.

Drawings can sometimes also go wrong, which often inspires new ideas but with sketches, there is less emphasis on accuracy, so more opportunity for errors of judgment and greatly increasing the chance of finding happy accidents.

Happy accidents, are where people find positive outcomes by accident and many great discoveries in art, science and all other areas are found often, in this way, the one premise for doing this is, you won’t find anything if your not looking.

When people draw they first sketch an outline, then they sketch where the detail goes and then they draw in the detail. This process is one of the basic rules of drawing and sketching, along with working from light to dark.

When people draw, they first make small light marks identifying where everything goes, in relation and proportionate to everything else in the drawing, as compared to the subject of your drawing or sketching.

Drawing focuses on conveying subjects, through the deeper understanding of details contained within them, both require you to think, about what you are doing, at least in the beginning, both require you to constantly look, from subject to work area.

Both teach you to see and to look for more, even when producing less detail, you still learn to see in terms of plains, angles, curves, contour, light and dark, the process of drawing or sketching, will both aid the development of this ability.

The more you do it, the better you get at it, sketching, draw and drawing are the same thing right?

Make your own graffiti art because it’s not as difficult, as you might think, it only takes, a basic knowledge and some practice. There are numerous styles of graffiti, but the most common factors are as follows.

They are painted in strong vibrant colors, that often clash.

They are intended to be attention grabbing.

They are often emotive concepts, that question the norm.

They often contain 3D lettering.

They often contain lettering that overlaps.

The heavy bold 3D lettering is very apparent, in the majority of graffiti art images and is usually the starting point, for most potential artists, as it most often starts with your name, tag or handle. Many of the same, distinctive, bold style lettering’s, used in advertising to create impact, are also used by the graffiti artist, so are a good place to look, for ideas. It most often reflects and resembles, the branding or advertising art world, in many ways but chiefly as a counter alternative, usually with a strong, social, political massage, that the artist is passionate about.

The pictures or pieces of work themselves, will contain sharp hard hitting contrasts.

They will be painted in stark vivid colors.

They will be well defined, with strong shadows and outlines.

The best way to start, your piece of graffiti art, is by drawing smaller ideas and outlines, that you can later scale, up to any size, this will help you to understand, the problems you might face, when attempting to create something bigger. Scaling your ideas, is a simple task, once you have a smaller drawing or painting to work from. There is an endless supply of ideas online, if you need them, for fonts to use in your graffiti, as well as examples of graffiti, created by others to feast your eyes upon and incorporate into your own work.

The tools to use for your designs or ideas are, pencils, felt tipped or marker pens and fine line drawing pens, all of these come in a very wide range of distinctive and vivid colors, that make them an ideal choice, for graffiti artists. If you need ideas for a graffiti font to use, there are plenty of sites online, that have examples for you to copy.

Outlines can be created with a graphite pencil and or any permanent black ink pen but fine line and wide chisel or bullet tipped markers, are a preferred choice of many. Shading around the letters you’ve outlined, with a range of different colors will enhance the 3D effects of your lettering, to make it more distinctive.

Make your own graffiti art because it is really easy, if you use these methods and it is not as difficult, as you might think.

Yes I know, that there are many who would not consider this graffiti but I say “make money not trouble”.

When you are ready, to paint your outline drawings and ideas onto canvases or bigger surfaces, you can use the grid reference method, by marking out a grid over the top of the drawing, you want to enlarge. You then recreate this grid onto the area, where you want to redraw, your original drawing and then use it to measure, where everything goes by comparing grids. Very large areas can be marked out with string, by impregnating it with chalk or charcoal, simply by rubbing it into the fibers, when the string is in this condition, you stretch it out tightly, across the area that you want to mark out. Then you pull it out from the middle and let it go, so it then snaps back against the surface of the new drawing area, leaving a mark imprinted on to it.

You can then use the chalk or charcoal to redraw, the outlines onto your new drawing area. Spray paint the main outlines, with a similar color to the background but a couple of shades lighter or darker, so it will cover more easily if you need to change anything later, allow this to dry before continuing.

Then you can begin to fill in the details and your areas of color, with spray paint in much the same way, by starting with the lightest colors first and the largest areas, then putting in the details. Finally you can carefully fill out the black outlines, with your spray paints, adding highlights and finishing touches at the same time, you can even use a brush, to do your very fine details. Once again let me say make your own graffiti art because it’s not, as difficult as you might think, it is really easy, if you use these methods.

Julian Beever 3d paintings are great but I would also like to give mention to, Kurt Wenner, Edgar Müller, who are three other artists, known for doing, modern anamorphic, perspective, 3d paintings, 3d street art and these three artists, give us some proof, that there is more to looking, than just pointing your eyes, in the direction of an object.

Everybody and the dog will tell you, drawing is about looking and do you know what, all of them are right but do you want to know something else, very few of them actually explain what they mean, do they?

How important is it to understand, some basic principles about looking, when trying to understand Julian Beever 3d paintings better?

I don’t know about you but I see so much, I cannot possibly take it all in, we live in a very visually informative world, 80% of all the information we receive, is visual any way. So we are literally, being bombarded with it, saturated with it, we even see things in our sleep or at least, we think we do.

But we actually see very little because it doesn’t register, we are not really looking, we are just seeing, browsing you might say but if you are going to learn to draw, then you need to look, with reason.

Here are some obvious points, that weren’t so obvious, to me once upon a time; I used to lie on the bed, as a kid and draw, but no matter how hard I tried, my pictures never looked right.

When I used to draw at the kitchen table, they always turned out, much better and it was because of the angel I was drawing at, if you try to draw at an angle, lying down, then you will usually end up with, a distorted image. If you only look at this image, from the angle at which it was drawn, it will look more accurate, than if you hold it up squarely in front of your eyes, to view.

This information is very useful, when you look at the fantastic work, created by chalk sidewalk artist’s, Kurt Wenner, Julian Beever and Edgar Müller, these are modern day artist’s, doing chalk, 3d pavement art, that completely turns, this whole problem to an advantage, not only do they make this, a unique selling point but they also, make it their trade mark.
Before Julian Beever, 3d paintings, there was Andrea Pozzo.

There is a name for this type of art, it is called, anamorphic perspective and the earliest examples of this are, by Leonardo Da Vinci and Andrea Pozzo.

Some examples of this early work, can be seen in Andrea Pozzo’s work, on the ceilings of the Jesuit, St Ignatius’ Church, Rome, 1685 – 1694, this masterpiece, is a fabulous example, of illusory perspectives and the dome being of particular importance.

Sant Ignazio ceiling.

Image taken from Wikipedia as example please click image to see full size.

Sant Ignazio ceiling further away.

Image taken from Wikimedia as an example of this work please click image for bigger full size version.

The dome is not real either and from a certain point, marked with a brass plate, on the floor, you find it very difficult, to see that it isn’t.

Kurt Wenner, Julian Beever and Edgar Müller, these guys do this, on the street and also create, fabulous examples of illusory perspectives, so the question for me, is how they do these illusions.

Julian Beever, Edgar Müller and Kurt Wenner.

Julian Beever, 3d paintings.

Kurt Wenner, 3d paintings.

Edgar Müller, 3d paintings.

Edgar Müller uses the computer, to digitally render the work, concepts, ideas, if you can use computer photo editing software, then this is the way to go.

Looking at the way Edgar constructs his drawings, shows that he uses, what looks like masking tape, to get parts of his street paintings accurate, it also looks like he takes an approach, similar to that used in Julian Beever’s, 3d paintings.

Here are just a couple of ideas, I tried, after looking at work done by these other guys but mostly I used Edgar Müller, for inspiration and I was pleasantly surprised.

Julian Beever explains, that he is not a mathematician and has no mathematical skills to speak of; he says that he uses, the good old grid method, in order to construct his drawings. He also uses, a camera on a tripod as a viewer, which enables him to use the fixed position of the camera, to always be able to identify, the exact position, to view the street painting accurately.

A statement made by Kurt Wenner, that explains, how he approaches his work, “Artistic geometry was the most fascinating subject” this could be mathematics, in another name, exactly the opposite to Julian Beever.

If I was going to create the illusion above, then I would do it like this, first of all I would do a scaled painting, on paper of the above image, that would be four times bigger, than the original image, which is A4, so my preparation painting would be A2 in size.

This will give me a greater understanding, of how to construct the drawing and mix the colors, it will give me a feeling for the picture, plus it is a desirable image, in it’s own right. This would also give me two images, to work from and a more informed understanding of what, I would be attempting to create.

I would find the farthest point, from my camera tripod, yes I would use a camera because after carrying out some experiments, I found it to be very helpful for viewing, not just this type of work either, so thanks to Julian Beever.

I also realized that these illusions, don’t have the same impact to the naked eye and after reading extensively, about these artists, I find that they also hint at this.

From the farthest point, I would run a tape like Edgar Müller does, to use this, as an anchor point, for the rest of the picture. Then using identifiable points, in the drawing space, environment, with this actually being the street, I would construct my drawing outline, from reference points identified, when doing the preparation painting.

A plan, showing how elements in the picture, can be used to mark out the drawing.Street art construction plan with text to explain in more detail.

I would construct my outline by marking in key areas, identifying them from my original image and marking them, with a chalk stick, until I was confident I had enough information, to create my painting. I would keep going back, to the camera to view the image and check for accuracy, I would basically draw it, like any other drawing, by using reference points, from the surrounding landscape, to identify reference points in the drawing/painting. This is a necessary, continual and ongoing process, when doing any kind of drawing but even more so, when doing anamorphic perspectives, you need to be checking and double checking for accuracy, just like Julian Beever and others, my favorites are the Julian Beever, 3d paintings.

If you would like to find out more, about how to do this, then follow this link, to Julian Beever sidewalk art, chalk art and see some more of his work, and get a better understanding of Julian Beever, 3d paintings.

Julian Beever pavement art, sidewalk art, chalk artist, has new work that can be observed in his book (Pavement Chalk Artist) 2010, it’s a lovely full color book, showing some wonderful new images and insights about how, exactly, he found his path, to creating, this popular form of street art. I loved reading through this book and attaining a glimpse, into the artist himself, I purchased mine from Amazon . com, it was worth it, much better than any e-book, I could down load off line and sits nicely on the shelf, in my collection, begging visitors, to also take a look.

Simple pencil drawings do exist, yes they do, and the most difficult part, of any drawing, is the construction, so to make it easy, eliminate, the construction problem. Now to be honest, if you eliminate, the construction process, then you might be thinking, there is nothing left to draw, but you will only be half right because there are two parts to a drawing, construction and shading.

If you trace the basic construction, of your potential drawing, then take the time, to fill it in, by doing the shading, you are actually reducing the work load, by at least half but still learning, how to draw. This is not to say, that you are cheating because you still have to do the shading and although, the grunt work of the construction, has been done easy, you still have to make sure your construction, of the shading is accurate. This means that you still, have to do important work, on your picture or drawing but with, less effort. The end results, are that you end up learning, how to draw better, producing very nice drawings, that are accurate, with only having to put half the work, into doing it.

Just in case, you need some further reassurance, that it is OK, to do this, then take a good look around, for information about how to draw. You will find much reference, to using a viewing grid, to help you, construct your drawing and viewing grids, are just a slightly more, difficult way, to trace pictures. Many artists world wide, use viewing grids, as their preferred method, of doing construction drawings and what they are doing in actual fact, is tracing their construction drawings, by using a grid, instead of using a picture, to trace over.

Simple pencil drawings, do exist and people do them all the time, they just don’t explain, how they are done because you never ask.

Let me tell you of some ways, that you can use, to do your drawing easy, there are a number of different ways, you can do this, one of them is, by keeping your drawing to a minimum.

Perhaps we can call this, the minimalist KISS method, Keep It Simple Stupid-KISS.

Minimalism, is an art form in its own right, just in case you didn’t know but in my brain, I most often consider, that less is more and without getting into any deep philosophy, on this, I often feel that simple is best. The process used, for all drawing is, construction through sequential building blocks, with each being a step, to the next and so on, to completion.

When shading a drawing, you can keep it to a minimum, by using, the white of the paper, as much as possible and only shading, the darker areas, so as to reduce the amount of work needed, in doing all of the detail. This can be very effective, producing some nice drawings, that are in a style called chiaroscuro, where there are strong contrasts, between light and dark. These where often practiced, by drawing statues and plaster busts, which would be, very light in tone because they would often, be white in color or very near white, making it easy, to keep the shading, to a minimum, only emphasizing the darkest tones.

To make drawing easy, we need to reduce, the amount of steps we take, to get to an end result, so we can do this, in a number of ways. Reduce the drawing, down to use a minimum number of marks, in order to make the drawing more simple. This can be accomplished by making line drawings and examples of this, can be seen in, cartoon type drawings, Bart Simpson, Mickey Mouse characters, are just a couple but there are probably, thousands of others, meaning that simple is just as legitimate, as the complicated.

Another method is tracing because it will reduce, the time spent, on doing a construction drawing and reduce the drawing, to only be made up, of simple lines. This can be a big saving, depending on how much you know or understand about it and your ability, because somebody, who is good at drawing free hand, by sight drawing, can sometimes, draw faster, than they can trace, some drawings. Tracing is also, a very good tool for learning to draw and is, I consider, largely undervalued, under exposed and practiced by many, if not all professionals because when, you do drawing, as a job of work, time is money.

The key to drawing easy is, to keep it simple, less is more because if you consistently draw, in ways that are simple, the harder ones, get easier, as well.

Drawing lines, is not quite as simple, as you might think because the weight and thickness, of the lines we make, have an impact, on the effectiveness of our drawings, to add to this, is the hardness of the line, which I will explain later, is also of importance.

The meaning to thickness of line, should in essence be obvious, it means what it says, how wide or narrow, the line actually is, has an impact, on how our brain, relates to that line in context, of what is surrounding it and the tonal value of the line, also has an impact, on what is seen, when I say tonal value, I am talking about how light or dark, the line is in tone.

If you draw a circle, with a wider, darker line along the bottom area, it will look like it is, the bottom of a sphere and will start to look like, a ball shape, rather than, simply just, looking like a circle. This also gives, the bottom half of the circle or sphere more weight because the wider line, is more substantial, especially, if it is also darker in tone, it will attract the eye, giving more emphasis and importance, to it, this also creates the illusion, of light and shadow, that is often used, to emphasize, the under areas of shapes, we draw, suggesting, the shape, is three dimensional.

Please take a look, at the drawings, of the two circles, 1 & 2 below, to see an example of what I am trying to explain, also take a look at, 3 & 4, these lines and circles, have been made with a 5 mm, a half cm, flat pencil, notice how the line varies in width, giving it the look of a twisted ribbon. Number 5, shows, how lines can go, from a hard, definite edge, to a more subtle, less definite edge, that can be used to great effect, in your line drawings. These different types of line, can be used to create light and shadow, so as to suggest the illusion of form and shape but still maintaining, the quality of being a line, using this, within your line drawing, can start to bring, your line drawings, to life.

The dragon drawing below, was created with pen and ink, it puts very little emphasis on line quality, it is a line that is consistent, in thickness, giving little or no quality, other than just being a line but even so, it does create the image of a dragon, through the use of drawing lines, with nothing more.

You can do this, with video off your mobile phone because speed drawing/speed painting, are not anything of the like, they are speeded up video, nothing more but you knew this, didn’t you?

To do this, you video record yourself, drawing a picture but you can take two weeks, if you want and just do ten minuets, every day, I did my first recording, with a digital camera, that would only recorded, ten minuets at a time. It was a lot of work because I had to capture the film from the camera, every time, so I could take another ten minuets, it worked and I was very pleased with the result.

If you have Windows Move Maker, on your PC, then you can use it to capture your video and edit it, for distribution to any of the online video networks, for a little effort really, when you think of the possibilities of getting it seen.

Just in case, you don’t know but online video, is the biggest thing since television, we can pull this information because we want it, all of us and we do all the time, online video is here, right now, use it.

Editing with Windows Move Maker, on your PC, is easy, it is not the best but it is more than adequate, for making online videos, it just takes a little effort to do so but let me tell you, they all do, even Adobe Premier, in fact it’s worse.

The biggest problem is perhaps getting music for your video, everybody has a copyright but not any more because you can take our music and sounds, if you want to, just record them with Audacity, free software, easy to use.

If you do a quick search for Audacity you will find it easy.

If you have any questions just ask.

Don’t just make great pictures, film it, put it online and at least let us all have a look, make speed drawing videos easy.

The video below, was made with a camera hanging from the ceiling, on a piece of string, it is an example of what you can do, if your prepared to experiment a little but make sure, it is OK to put screws and stuff, into the ceiling, and also make sure, they are safe enough, to hold your camera.

The video below, was made using a boom stand, it is a stand that is used by musicians to hold a microphone, this was adapted, to hold a Kodak, Play Sport, HD camera and was completed, in different places, around the house. I was able to do this easily because the boom stand, is so versatile and easy to set up, I have been able to set it up, between myself and the camera, without much restriction or the work being obscured, by my body.

The video below, was again made with the, Kodak, Play Sport camera and microphone boom stand, between myself and a computer monitor, with only my hands getting in the way, which is unavoidable.

This page is not very technical because it does not need to be, just like art doesn’t, what is important is doing it, if your efforts are not as good, as you would like them, don’t publish them and try doing it another way. If you do this you will learn, far more valuable information and make your set up, to suit yourself.

To make speed drawing videos, does not take a great deal of money or technical skill, just a mobile phone, with a camera and some way of fixing, your camera into a position, so it can film your work, as you are doing it.

In the process of drawing images, we often start out with a basic outline drawing, as the foundation, for learning where everything else goes, in relation to the outline and each other. The problem I find with many beginners and well practiced people alike, is they do not always, understand outlines very well, also as in the case of beginners, they do not understand at all, in many instances.

The easiest way to draw and understand outlines, is by using tracing methods of drawing because when you trace an image, you can only, realistically make an outline, as tracing doesn’t lend it’s self to shading. Tracing also gives you a better understanding, of how pictures work, especially when trying to understand, construction drawing.

Car wheel images showing distortion when seen in perspective.Car wheel images showing perspective distortion in a line drawing format.

Let me explain, by using a car wheel as an example, we all know that wheels are round but they are only round, when we look at them directly face on, because when we turn them, at an angle, they become, more and more oval, in shape.

The correct term to call this oval shape, is an ellipse and is something many people have problems with, when trying to draw them accurately, to find out more about this, please take look at single point perspective and two point perspective, you will find the both helpful.

Get yourself some pictures that you might like to draw and trace them, so as to be able, to take a look at these images, as only line drawings, you will notice when tracing these outlines, that they are most often, not as you might have thought they are.

Doing this, will help you to understand, that shapes are not often, the shapes we think we see and that wheels, are most often not circular but oval, along with many other shapes we see but actually, only think we see. This is because our brains tell us that wheels are round or that a shape is this shape or that shape, when in actual fact, many shapes are not what we think they are because our brains are telling us what we see, rather than actually, seeing what we see.

I hope that this will always be true but I also worry, about there being increasingly, less and less of the human elements, in our lives on a daily basis and at the same time, I embrace the machine for it’s ability, to deliver greater instantaneous gratification, when drawing human.

Can machines draw like a human, could this ever become a reality or is it already partly real because machines can be programmed, to copy every single human movement, with extremely fine precision, every single time.

So the one attribute, a human has over a machine, is we make mistakes and we are never going to be perfect but we are also good at hiding them or adapting them, for our purpose because after all, when drawing we are creating illusions anyway. To add to this, according to the esteemed Greek philosopher, Aristotle, art and science are created in the struggle for perfection. I will add to this and say in a perfect world, there would be no struggle for anything because it is perfect. Drawing is a struggling, to perfect the perfect illusion, where as all illusion is seemingly something it is not, so it is far from perfect. Perfection would serve no purpose anyway because it is the struggle for perfection and the lack of the same, that is the motivator of all action. Conflict is the motivator of the reaction and is the action, that drives further reaction, so perfection is the road to doom. In the struggle between order and chaos, one cannot exist without the other, in theory but within order, there is no chaos and chaos exists, with or without order, order is only a tool, with which to measure chaos. Chaos I believe is the engine of action or reaction, so therefore exists with or without order and it is the fact, that you can’t draw, that makes you human, which makes you good at drawing human, so remember that.

I am sick of hearing it said that drawing the human form is no easy task because in that context drawing anything is no easy task, when in fact I know full well, that drawing is easy, we all do it all the time but just don’t realize.

Lets get real about this, if you can move a drawing implement, around on a drawing surface and make marks with it, that is drawing. If you can make symbols, that look like other things, then bully for you because that’s not drawing. Drawing is being able to make marks, with a drawing implement on a surface, capable of retaining those marks, everything else is about being able to see and organize, those marks so they represent the symbols.

I hear people taking gobbledy gook and they can’t help it because it is wholeheartedly encouraged, by the arty farty brigade. You see the one thing all drawings are is illusions, one thing organized, to look like something else, which is an illusion, a trick or even a lie, what ever you think it is, it is not because it is an illusion.

Many, many people like to make out that drawing is this special, wonderful ability, that people are blessed with, well it might be true of some people but not me. God gave me a pencil and said there you go son, you can draw now, so then all I had to do, was organize the marks into illusions, I then spent my whole life organizing marks into illusions because hey, nobody’s perfect, and isn’t that the point.

Now if you want to get good at drawing human, then go away and make a few mistakes, it’s the only way to draw.

Cool drawings are not as easy to find, as you might think because your version of cool, is almost certainly not my version of what is cool, anymore than the next person because it is a matter of taste and you might find that, some of the people can be pleased, some of the time but not all of them, all of the time, labels such as cool are subjective, so they are as individual as the individuals themselves.

I have already established, that it is highly unlikely that, what I find cool, you will also but I can still help you find cool pictures, by giving you some ideas about the ways that I use.

If I know what I am looking for I do searches on Google Images, this is the quickest way I know for finding a picture or drawing, I am looking for because in case you did not know, you can search using key words, the same way you do when you are searching for anything else online, there is one down side to this and that is, although it is much easier nowadays, than it would have been ten years ago, it is still time consuming and laborious. Sometimes you have to literally look through hundreds and hundreds of them, because there are so many.

You can also do searches on other sites, like Flickr or Flixya but there are too many photo management sites to mention them all, these sites store millions of indexed images, belonging to other people, pictures they have submitted. Some of these types of sites, actually pay you a small fee if others, want to use the ones that you have submitted. They all have rules about this but these are usually quite liberal and open minded, yet still quite tasteful or respectable because they have to try to please all.

One of the best ways to find cool drawings or pictures, that I especially like because of the way it works is a free online tool, called Stumble Upon.

It works like this, you join Stumble Upon by submitting your details, to become a member, then you select topics of interest, the more you pick the more variety you will see but these will not all be pictures, unless you clicked on the tool bar to select just images. The great part about it is this, you click a button to be presented with random pages of interest, if you set it to images then you will just Stumble Upon random pictures, covering any topic.

Now because the best usually climb to the top, through popularity in this program, then you get presented with the most popular, so they are usually very good but also besides this, they are random, so you do not have control and are presented with images, that also surprise you, giving you some great random subjects, that often stimulate your own ideas, for creations to work on.

I find Stumble Upon a great tool for giving me new ideas, when I don’t have any but also very entertaining, with it’s rich variety of cool drawings and pictures, also a great place to put your own work on too.